The primary thing that any technology startup must do is build a product that’s at least ten times better at doing something than the current prevailing way of doing that thing. Two or three times better will not be good enough to get people to switch to the new thing fast enough or in large enough volume to matter. The second thing that any techno

Many entrepreneurs think that if you build a killer product, your customers will beat a path to your door. We call this line of thinking The Product Trap: the fallacy that the best use of your time is always improving your product. In other words, “if you build it, they will come” is wrong.

I have seen five main reasons why early startups fail: The problem the product aims to solve exists, but it isn’t big or painful enough for people to care (or pay to solve it). There are already pretty good solutions on the market, which the founder has missed (bad research) or discounted (hubris). The product doesn’t deliver enough value for custo

Vicente jokes that they have an internal “wrapper-death countdown” which keeps track of the number of days the company survived since the last time it was “pronounced dead.” Here are his thoughts on how startups can be successful in a market where the capabilities of frontier models continues to expand: • Do one thing really well. Vicente takes the